Well I haven’t had much time to game sadly, but from the benchmark it seems great.
First big patch/bug fix dropped today.
We’ve added some new events at different levels. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to polish them for the premiere, but we didn’t want to throw them away. So – hocus pocus - some new stuff for you guys!
I only tooled around with it a bit after it came out of EA. There’s a lot there, and it can be a bit overwhelming for me. Gonna probably just restart it from the beginning.
I heard you like roadmaps!
I totally forgot about this game as other new games appeared. Now that I see that roadmap, it may have been the best choice!
Yeah I was like “meh early access, I will wait for release”, now I am “meh full version, I will wait for it to be content complete”.
I played a fair bit of this – I’m pretty sure I unlocked all the weapons and base upgrades – and it never occurred to me that it wasn’t content complete. However, I never figured out what I was supposed to do with the titular substance that lets you change your past decisions to, uh, accomplish something? I mean, I have the resources to do it, but I have no idea why I would do it. So maybe that’s related to what’s being added and why the game might feel incomplete?
-Tom
No review?
It’s also worth noting that this came out on Xbox consoles today, and it doesn’t say anything about early access (or Games Preview as they say on that console). $30. Not sure for Playstation.
First free dlc out.
Man, I have to get back to this some time. I’ve had it since EA and only scratched the surface a bit.
Dec 21st, free content!
PS5 enhanced version you say?
I really wanted to like this, but as I posted last year, I couldn’t figure out the overall progression. I mean, I was building a base and unlocking weapons and whatnot just fine. But I could never figure out what was going on with that dream palace or whatever, and that seemed to be the game’s overarching progression: collecting “chernobylite” and using it to, uh, do stuff. So when I had some “chernobylite”, but I still couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do with it, I got bored of shooting soldiers with fancy new weapons for no real gain.
Was this anyone else’s experience? Or did y’all figure out what you’re supposed to do in the dream palace? Are you even supposed to do anything there?
-Tom
Well, the game ends when you do the final heist mission and that is somewhat irrespective of the dream palace.
Somewhat ~ The dream palace is basically a log of the story decisions you make throughout the game, and gives you the power to change those. This in turn affects who will come on the heist and how parts of the heist play out. I can’t remember if lacking certain companions makes the heist impossible, but if your dream palace is ‘full’ (i.e. you’ve unlocked every story node) it’s basically all that’s left for you to do.
Ultimately the dream palace boils down to determining who lives and and dies by the time the credits roll. You basically have to choose the ‘correct’ combination of decisions in the dream palace so as to not piss anyone off so much they leave, plus a couple of other bits that have consequences during the heist itself. Then you choose the ‘correct’ combination of decisions during the heist so that nobody dies. The number of combinations here are at least 222, so good luck brute forcing the ‘perfect’ ending without a guide - though in fairness the game does nudge you somewhat toward some decisions and you don’t need the ‘perfect’ ending to finish it.
You got farther than I did. I picked it up because I loved STALKER and the atmosphere looked neat. And for a bit it was really cool. But I floundered with the whole direction of the game, trying to figure out what I needed to do, and eventually figured out that what the game wanted me to do, I didn’t necessarily enjoy.
When you say you didn’t enjoy “what the game wanted you to do”, do you mean the base building? Because I really enjoyed the basic gameplay loop of playing a short shooter mission, upgrading my base, then repeating. Or was it something more specific you weren’t enjoying?
I just wish I knew what I was supposed to be doing while upgrading the base. Because I’m pretty sure I had exhausted the upgrade options, gotten the best weapons and armor, and was just spinning my wheels by the time I gave up. But it seemed like I simply wasn’t able to access whatever gameplay was going on in those dream palace sequences. :(
-Tom
I think I never grokked the reason I was doing stuff, at the high level, as opposed to running errands and scavenging. That sort of thing was ok, but I could never really get into the whole story/mystery/mysticism shtick I guess. And the base building just confused me. I like base building, usually, but I never knew what to build or why or even sometimes how. Admittedly, it was a self-fulfilling cycle, as I got kind of frustrated and didn’t try to figure things out more. I might try the whole thing again some time though, as it had some good bits.
You don’t have to do anything in the “dreamworld” though you’ll be forced to go through it at least once. What should be happening is that you go on missions every day and the non-expiring story missions from your party members advance the overall story. Through those missions, you go and collect the necessary things to launch the final mission.
I completed the game a few months ago. In some ways it’s bad, in others it’s one of my favorites. My most important takeaway is that this isn’t a game you play for the gameplay. In terms of gameplay, the scavenging and base building are pretty good but get repetitive, the gunplay is passable but dragged down by bad enemy AI.
What’s amazing is the atmosphere and the visuals. I was blown away by the visuals, it’s such an accurate representation of what all those Soviet buildings looked like. I recognized specific pieces of furniture and posters, it’s that accurate. The environments in the game were like taking a time machine ride. The overall atmosphere is also very good, it’s desolate, it’s sad, it’s creepy. I also liked the “memory trips” through which story clues were delivered.
Oh and some of the characters you recruit get interesting - it’s worth having conversations with them at the base. Disclosure, I played in Russian and the game’s definitely better with a knowledge of Russian and the Soviet culture, there’s multiple references in there.
I also think any comparisons to Stalker should be avoided and are unhelpful. Chernobylite has nothing to do with Stalker except for being set in the Chernobyl Zone. The two games are not in the same genre, they don’t play similarly. The only thing in common is that they’re set in the same geographic area, and even then with a focus on different parts of it.
